Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  “Pittco to Marsport 18, O.K., E.T.A. is thirteen-fifty and I’ll tell Mr. Hackenburg. End.”

  Mail, thought Tad enviously. All Sun Lake ever got was. microfilmed reports from the New York office and business letters from customers. Aunt Minnie and Cousin Adelbert’s wouldn’t write to you unless you wrote to them; and Sun Lake couldn’t lay out cash for space-mail stamps.

  Tad’s ear itched. One thing he missed, he admitted to himself in a burst of candor, and he’d probably have to go on missing it. The Sun Lake Society of New York couldn’t spontaneously mail him the latest Captain Crusher Comix.

  He had read to tatters Volume CXVII, Number 27, smuggled under his sweater from Earth. And to this day he hadn’t figured out how the captain had escaped from the horrible jam he’d been in on Page 64. There had been a Venusian Crawlbush on his right, a Martian Brownie on his left, a Rigelian Paramonster drifting down from above and a Plutonian Bloodmole burrowing up from below. Well, the writers of Captain Crusher knew their business, thought Tad, though they certainly didn’t know much about Mars—the real Mars. Their hero never seemed to need OxEn or clothing any warmer than hose and cape when on a Martian adventure. And he was always stumbling over Brownies and dead cities and lost civilizations.

  Bunk, of course. Brownies, dead cities and lost civilizations would make Mars a more interesting place for a kid. But when a person grows up, other things mattered more than excitement. Things like doing a good job and knowing it. Things like learning. Getting along. Probably, Tad thought uncomfortably, getting married some day.

  “Mars Machine Tool to Sun Lake. Sun Lake, Sun Lake, Sun Lake, Mars Machine Tool, Sun Lake—”

  “Sun Lake to Mars Machine Tool, I read you, G.A.,” Tad snapped, peeved.

  The operator might have waited just a second before he went into the buzz.

  “Mars Machine Tool to Sun Lake, message. Pittco One to Pittco Three. Via Rolling Mill, Distillery Mars, Brenner Pharmaceutical, Mars Machine Tool, Sun Lake, outgoing rocket cargo space requirements are: ballast, thirty-two cubic meters; braced antishift, twelve point seventy-five cubic meters; glass-lined tank, fifteen cubic meters; cushioned, one point five cubic meters. Regret advise will require steerage space one passenger. F.Y.I., millwright’s helper Chuck Kelly disabled by marcaine addiction.”

  The repeats followed and Tad briskly receipted. He raised Pittco Three and booted the message, grinning at a muffled “God damn it!” over the earphones as he droned out the bad news about Kelly. Steerage passenger space didn’t come as high as cushioned cargo cubage; a steerage passenger was expected to grab a stanchion, hang on and take his lumps during a rough landing; but it was high enough.

  SUN LAKE couldn’t afford cushioned cubage, ever, and settled for braced antishift. Sometimes crates gave and split under the smashing accelerations, but the cash you had to lay out for cargo protected springs, hydraulic systems and meticulous stowage by the supercargo himself wasn’t there. It meant a disgruntled customer every once in a while, but the tariffs made you play it that way.

  The door behind him opened and closed. “Gladys?” he asked. “You’re early.”

  “It’s me, sonny,” said a man’s voice—Graham’s. “You mind-filing a little copy for me?”

  The newsman handed him a couple of onionskin pages. “Phillips Newscode,” he said. “Think you can handle it?”

  “I guess so,” said Tad unhappily. “We’re supposed, to cooperate with you.” Blankly he looked at the sheets and asked: “Why bother to code it, though?”

  “It saves space, for one thing. You get about five words for one. ‘GREENBAY,’ for instance, means ‘An excited crowd gathered at the scene. ‘THREEPLY’ means ‘In spite of his, or their, opposition.’ And, for another thing, what’s the point of my knowing the code if I never use it?” He grinned to show he was kidding.

  Tad ignored the grin and remarked: “I thought that was it.” He entered the time in the log and said into the mike: “Sun Lake to Pittco Three.” Pittco acked.

  “Sun Lake to Pittco Three, long Phillips ‘Newscode message, Sun Lake to Marsport. Via Pittco Three. Message: Microfilm following text and hold for arrival Douglas Graham Marsport and pickup at Administration Building. GREEN-BAY PROGRAHAM SUNLAKE STOP POSTTWO ARGUABLE FUZZERS MARSEST BRIGHTEST STOP ARGUABLEST MARSING MY FACED GIN-FLOOZERS DOPEBORT FEL-KIL PARA UNME SUNLAKE HOCFOCUS COPLOCKED ET-ERS EARTHED STOP SAPQUIS-FACT HOCPLAGUER ER-QUICK—”

  GRAHAM heard the last of the story go out and saw the kid note down the acknowledgment in the log.

  “‘Good job,” the gunther said. “Thanks, fella.”

  Outside, the chilly night air fanned his face. It had been a dirty little trick to play on the boy. They’d give him hell when they found out, but the message had to clear and that Stillman knew a little Phillips—enough to wonder and ask questions.

  Graham took a swig from his pocket flask and started down the street. He’d needed the drink, and he needed a long walk. It was surgery, he told himself, but surgery wasn’t always pleasant for the surgeon. That doctor might be able to understand if he could only step back and see the thing in perspective. As it was, Tony obviously believed Mrs. Kandro’s absurd story about somebody doping the beans.

  The writer grinned sardonically. What a cesspool Mars must be if even these so-called idealists were so corrupted! Marcaine addiction by a brand-new mother, theft of a huge quantity of marcaine clearly traced to the Colony. The doctor would hate him and think him two-faced, which he was. It was part of the job. He was going to start an avalanche; a lot of people would hate him for it.

  An impeccable, professional hatchet job on Sun Lake was the lever that would topple the boulder to start the avalanche. Senators would posture and declaim, bills would be written and rewritten by legislative clerks, but that would be just the dust over the rumbling rocks.

  The public relations boys of the industrials used to be newspapermen themselves, and they could pick their way through Phillips. The word would be passed like lightning. They’d learn, to their horror, that it wasn’t going to be a cheerful travelog quickie like his last two or three; that Graham was out for blood. The coded dispatch would be talked over and worried over in most of Mars’ administration buildings tonight. They would debate whether he was going to put the blast on all the colonies. But they’d note that he pinned all the guilt so far on Sun Lake, not mentioning specifically that the abortion and the prostitution had occurred at Pittco.

  So, by tomorrow morning, he’d let one of the industrials send a plane for him. He’d been playing hard to get for two days—long enough. He’d put on his jovial mask and they’d fall all over themselves dishing the dirt on each other. He’d make it a point to pass through Brenner Pharmaceutical. Quasi-legal operators like Brenner always knew who was cutting corners. And Bell—what tills did he have his hand in?

  Graham knew there wasn’t another newsman alive who could swing it—the first real story to come out of Mars besides press handouts from the industrials. And the planet was rotten-ripe for it.

  But, mostly, he would just scare them, be the scoffing, good-humored know-it-all, so cheerfully sinister that they’d try to buy him off with dirt about the other outfits. He’d make no open promises, no open threats, and it all would drop into his lap the way it always had.

  No, not always, he grimly corrected himself. Once he’d been a green kid reporter, lucky enough to break the Bell scandal. He’d actually been sorry for the crook. There’d been a lot of changes since. It was funny what happened to you when you got into the upper brackets.

  FIRST you grabbed and grabbed.

  Women, a penthouse with a two-acre living room, silk shirts “built” for you instead of the nylon all the paycheck stiffs wore, “beefsteaks” broiled over bootleg charcoal made of real wood from one of Earth’s few thousand acres of remaining trees.

  You grabbed and grabbed, and then you got sick of grabbing. You felt empty and blank and worked like hell to make yourself think you were happy. An
d then, if you were lucky, you found out who you were.

  Graham had found out that he—the youngest one, underfed, the one the big boys ganged up on for snitching, the one the cop called a yellow little liar, the one nobody liked, the one who always got his head knucked when they played Nigger Inna Graveyard—yes, he had power. It was the monstrous energy of Earth’s swarming billions. If you could reach them, you could have them. You could slash down what was rotten and corrupt; a thieving banker, a bribed commissioner, a Mars colony.

  Under the jovial mask it hurt when they called you a sensationalist, said you were unanalytical, had no philosophy, couldn’t do anything but set down facts to titillate the uncritical audience. But what you could do and they couldn’t was stir the billions of Earth, make them laugh, make them hopeful, make them rage—and when they raged, focus their rage to a white-hot spot that cauterized a particular bit of rottenness.

  Graham stumbled and took a swig from his flask.

  Who had to have a philosophy?

  What was wrong with exposing crackpots and crooks? The first real news story out of Mars would break up the Sun Lake Colony. Some good would go with the bad; the surgeon had no choice. That Kandro woman and her baby! The child belonged on Earth. And it would go there. The little thing would never know if not for Graham that there was anything; but Mars. I’m supposed to be hard-boiled, he thought, a little drunk and sentimental, but I know what’s right for that kid.

  “Hey!” he said. Where the hell was he, anyway? Wandering in the desert, high as a kite on his expected triumph. His feet had led him down the Colony street, along the path to the airfield, past it and a few kilometers toward the Rimrock Hills. He blamed it on the Mars gravity. Your legs didn’t tire here, for one thing. The radio shack light was plain behind him; dimmer and off to the left of it shone the windows of the Lab, merged in one beacon.

  The radio shack light went out and then on again. A moment later, so did the light from the Lab.

  “Power interruption,” he said. “Or I blinked.”

  It happened again, first the radio shack and then the Lab. And then it happened once more.

  The writer took out his flask and gulped. “Who’s out there?” he yelled. “I’m Graham!”

  There wasn’t any answer, but something came whistling out of the darkness at him, striking his parka and falling to the ground. He fumbled for it while still trying to peer through the night for whatever had passed between him and the lights of Sun Lake.

  “What do you want?” he yelled into the darkness hysterically. “I’m Graham! The writer! Who are you?”

  Something whizzed at him and hit his shoulder.

  “Cut that out!” he shrieked, and began to run for the lights of Sun Lake. He had taken only a few steps when something caught at his leg and he floundered onto the ground. The next and last thing he felt was a paralyzing blow on the back of his head.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  TONY woke up in time for breakfast, an achievement in itself. He’d had, at best, some hundred and fifty minutes of sleep after a long and hard day, and that interrupted by emergency, crisis, and triumph.

  He washed without noticing the stench of the alcohol. He noted the time; good thing there was no Lab inspection to do this morning. He noticed the closed bedroom door; good thing he’d so hospitably given up his own bed to Graham, considering the unexpected turn of events the night before. He threw his parka over his shoulders and stepped out into the wan sunlight, oblivious to the lingering chill; good thing he—

  Good thing he could still laugh at himself, he decided. What was the old saw about all the world loving a lover? Nothing to it—it was the lover who loved the whole world. Love, lover, loving, he rolled the words around in his mind, trying to tell himself that nothing had really changed. All the old problems were still there, and a new one, really, taken on.

  But that wasn’t so. Graham had spent half the night writing his promised story. Sunny Kandro was all right at last. And Anna—Ansie—a problem? He could remember thinking, in the distant past, as long as two days ago, that such an involvement would present problems, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember what they were supposed to have been.

  HE went in to breakfast, not trying to conceal his exuberance, and sat down between Harve Stillman and Joe Gracey.

  “What’s got into you?” Harve asked.

  “Something ‘good’ happen?” Gracey demanded.

  Tony nodded. “The Kandro baby,” he explained, using the first thing that popped into his head. “Jim woke me up last night. Polly was—was having trouble with the baby,” he hastily amended the story.

  He’d have to tell Gracey about the marcaine. There was a problem after all, but this wasn’t the place for it; a Council meeting after breakfast maybe.

  “You know we’ve been having feeding trouble all along,” he explained. “I found the trouble last night. I don’t understand it, but it works. I took Sunny’s mask off.”

  “You what?”

  “Took his mask off; he doesn’t need it. Eats fine without it, too. Trouble was, he couldn’t breathe through his mouth and eat at the same time.”

  “Well, I’ll be—How do you figure it?”

  “Hey, there’s a story for the gunther,” Harve suggested. “ ‘Medical Miracle on Mars,’ and all that stuff. Where is he anyhow?”

  “Still sleeping, I guess. The bedroom door was closed.”

  “Did you talk to him last night?” Gracey asked.

  Tony attacked his plate of fried beans, washed them down with a gulp of “coffee,” and told the other man about Graham’s promise. “He was up half the night writing, too. I heard him while I was examining the baby.”

  “Did he show it to you?”

  “Not yet. He was asleep when I got back.”

  Harve pushed back his chair with a grunt of satisfaction. “I feel better already,” he grinned. “First decent meal I’ve had in days. What’s the program for today, Doc? You going to need me on radiological work?”

  “I don’t think so. I’ll let you know if we do, after Joe and I get together with the others. Got time for a meeting after breakfast?” he asked the agronomist, and Gracey nodded.

  “Okay, I’ll be in the radio shack if you want me,” Harve said. “The kids took over all day yesterday. Don’t like to leave them too long on their own.”

  “Right. But I don’t think we’ll need you.”

  That marcaine business—how in all that was holy, the doctor wondered, did anybody get marcaine onto Polly’s beans? After all the searching, in the middle of the hunt, who would do it? Why? And above all, bow?

  Maybe one of the others would have an angle on it.

  ii

  “ONE thing I’m glad about,” Gracey said soberly. “We did make a thorough search. Whatever happens from here on out, at least we’ve proved to our own satisfaction that nobody in Sun Lake stole the stuff.”

  “That’s nice to know,” Mimi agreed with considerably less feeling. “But frankly, I’d almost feel better if we had found it. I’d gladly turn the bum who took it over to Bell’s tender mercies, if it was one of us. This way, we have to depend on Graham. You’re sure he’s with us?” She looked questioningly from the doctor to the electronics man.

  “How sure can you get?” Nick shrugged. “He said so. Now we wait to see his story, that’s all.”

  “I don’t think we have to worry about that,” Tony said briefly. He couldn’t tell them any more. He was sure himself, but how could he explain without giving away Anna’s secret? “Look,” he went on briskly, “there’s something else we do have to think about. I told you about Sunny Kandro, Joe. There’s more to it than what I said at breakfast.”

  Nick and Mimi both sat forward with new interest, as Tony repeated the news about the removal of Sunny’s mask. He cut off their questions. “I didn’t tell you how it started, though. Jim came to get me, not for the baby, but for Polly.”

  A sharp rap on the door stopped him. Harve Stillman w
alked in. His face was grim; he carried a familiar sheaf of onionskin pages in his hands.

  “What’s the matter, Harve?” Mimi demanded. “Aren’t you supposed to be on shift in the radio shack?”

  “That’s right. I walked out.”

  “No relief?” she snapped. “Are you sick?”

  “I’m sick, all right. And it doesn’t make any difference now whether radio’s manned or not.” He slapped the onionskin onto the table, and threw down on top of it two sheets of closely written radio log paper. “There you are, folks, have a look. It’s all down in black and white. That’s the translation on the log sheets. The bastard filed it in Phillips, so Tad wouldn’t know what he was sending. “When I think what a sucker I was, letting him pump me about who knew newscode around here! Go on, read it!”

  Mimi picked up the sheets and glanced at the penciled text. Her face went white. She reached for the onionskin, glanced at it, and returned her eyes to the log sheets. In a minute she looked up again.

  “Harve, there couldn’t be any mistake?”

  “I know the code,” he said, bluntly.

  “Hey,” Nick protested, “could you maybe let us in on it?”

  “CERTAINLY,” she smiled bitterly. “This is the story written for us by D. Graham, your friend and mine. I was greeted by a frightened crowd on my arrival at Sun Lake, and no wonder. After two days in this community, I am able to reply to the heads-in-the-clouds idealists who claim that on Mars lies the hope of the human race. My reply is that on Mars I immediately came face-to-face into drunkenness, prostitution, narcotics, criminal abortion, and murder. It is not for me to say whether this means that Sun Lake Colony, an apparent center of these activities, should be shut down by law and its inmates deported to Earth. But I do know—”

  “That’s crazy!” Nick broke in. “I heard him say myself—” He stood up angrily.

  Tony reached out a hand to restrain him. “He didn’t promise a damn thing, Nick. We just heard it that way. He said he’d do a story, that’s all.”